


Hard To Love

by sugandt



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 19:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11789502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugandt/pseuds/sugandt
Summary: Samuel Drake attempts to live a life of normalcy alongside his brother and his wife. It does not go as planned.The Panamanian jungles feel closer to home, leaves brushing against his skin and the sound of insects in the evening, than any apartment that closely resembles a manmade beehive ever will. Samuel is not a bee, and he does not make sweet honey.





	Hard To Love

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very aware that Sam does not show any sort of mental illness in relation to his experiences in prison. I'm also aware that this fact is important to his characterization. However, I think the ending was just a bit strange, and I feel as if Sam were to settle down for a while, he would begin to show signs of anxiety or PTSD. 
> 
> Being stuck in prison for as long as Sam was, combined with the advances in technology would leave him on the negative side of the digital divide, and I intend to express that in this piece.
> 
> In this piece, Sam followed Nate and Elena back home and got a place for himself. He tries to settle down, but it doesn't work. Similar to how it doesn't work for Nate and Elena, only Sam is dealing with more personal issues. 
> 
> I'm not romanticizing mental illness.

Samuel doesn't have a type anymore. He's lost in this world, screens staring at him from any and every angle. He knows the basics; texting, calling, taking photos, crushing cell phones beneath his steel toed boots when Nathan orders him to. Except his boots aren't even boots, let alone have steel toes, sneakers, double knotted the way his mother taught him forty something years ago. He's staring at the remains of his phone, one hand still gripping the handle of his motorcycle, knuckles white. His heel won't stop twisting, get rid of the evidence, bury plastic within gravel, perhaps if he grinds the pieces into sand, the phone will have never existed in the first place.

In this world, he is very much lost. The Panamanian jungles feel closer to home, leaves brushing against his skin and the sound of insects in the evening, than any apartment that closely resembles a manmade beehive ever will. Samuel is not a bee, and he does not make sweet honey.

"Are you alright, Sam?"

Samuel is back in the present, arms wrapped around his middle, chin tucked into his chest, breath laboured and hot against his skin. Elena's hand, soft, rests upon his shoulder. She's like a mother-- Samuel can understand why Nathan is innately drawn to her, but Samuel cannot help but flinch when so much as touched. He's had barrels of guns pressed to his temple, heard the telltale sound of a trigger being pulled, and yet it is Elena Fisher that causes him to turn away.

"Yeah. Just... getting caught up in some memories. Thanks, 'Lena."

Elena does not look convinced.

Nathan calls it a sort of stress disorder. Elena agrees that prison, for Samuel, was traumatic. But wouldn't it be traumatic for anybody? Sam asks himself, later that evening, lying in the bed of his beehive. He hears the buzzing of the people who live to the left, a soft song, inaudible almost, floats through the wall. To the right, there's a rhythmic thump. Below him, silence, and above, footsteps pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

He slips out of bed, still wearing weathered denim head to toe. Washes his face in water as cold as ice, puts ice between his teeth just to feel something, lets it melt down his throat. The apartment, he decides, is stifling. Too cookie cutter, too normal, he has no clue as to what normalcy is. Is it the way Nathan's life seems to fit perfectly into a picture frame? Of course it isn't Nathan's fault, Samuel reminds himself, it has never been Nathan's fault.

Samuel pulls his shoes on, kneels down to double knot the laces out of habit, and pats down his pockets to ensure he has both a package of cigarettes and the respective lighter. There's a mirror by the door. He stares into it, into his own eyes, tangerine shaded lights casting long shadows upon his face. Does he recognize the reflection? Beneath his fingertips, the metal of his keys are cold, and the raised skin of his tattoo feels thin, leathered almost. This isn't surprising.

Unfamiliar with the city, Samuel chooses a direction, left, and walks.

Crushed, like his cell phone in the gravel, Samuel is caught beneath the fallen main mast on the lost ship. Perhaps he should let it all end, here. Is he not indebted to Rafe, all the money the man had spent to get the three of them to this very spot? Money, not wasted but thrown away, God, does Rafe know the value of a dollar, or only the value of one million? Shifting, the mast pushes Samuel closer to the deck, and he swears he feels a rib snap. It should be Rafe under here, Samuel seethes, tasting blood, it should be that bastard to has to pay, for Samuel is not indebted to him, instead, the other way around. He imagines Nathan shoving a sword through Rafe's chest, imagines the blood that would splatter across his nose, painting his face. And then he would do it again. And again.

No, that's not how it went. That's not how he felt. What he feels now is cold, sick, lost, pathetic. Somehow, Samuel is sitting on a park bench at a bus stop, a girl is perched beside him, eyes wide like an owl's. He wonders if she can twist her head all the way around, too.

"Does this bus go to the city center?"

Samuel shrugs. He truly doesn't know. There's a lot he doesn't know.

"I'll take it anyway," she says, looking down at her shoes, black stilettos with ruffles on the straps. Then, she glances at Samuel's feet.

"Your laces are untied."

Samuel rides the bus until the last stop, the city's center. The girl does not give him a second look, and his laces remain untied.

"Nathan," Samuel slurs, drunkenly, into the microphone. On the other line, Nathan's voice groggily replies, and it's obvious Samuel had woken him up, "Nathan, I'm lost. My fuckin' shoes, Nate, my shoes are untied, and I'm lost."

In the morning, Samuel is presented with a breakfast of poached eggs, bacon, and two pieces of toast cut into triangles, courtesy of Elena.

"This is not where you're meant to be," Elena says, not touching him this time. She genuinely means it: life of normalcy is not a mold Samuel can fit his limbs into. But he has nowhere else to go, other than into the hole of working a 9-to-5 job just to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck-- just the thought causes his chest to clench. One would assume that any inmate would desire a simple life, a plastic wrapped Nathan and Samuel Drake life where problems are solved with words instead of bullets.

"You're going to work for Sullivan," Nathan announces over the rim of his coffee, black and steaming, "thought you'd appreciate a change of scenery."

"And if things get worse," Elena adds, "you know, with the flashbacks. We're only a phone call away."

A phone, undamaged, is safely stowed in Samuel's pocket. His hair is clean, his skin is clean, and his shoes are laced. The plane, destined for Victor Sullivan, waits for him to board, beckoning him to leave the beehive and the concrete jungle.

Samuel climbs the stairs to the aircraft.


End file.
